For Brittney Griner and Glory Johnson, a Complicated Match Made on the Hardwood

These days, even in conservative Arizona, same-sex weddings are a dime a dozen. But this one was different.

This was a marriage between a gay woman and a straight woman.

This was a wedding that two weeks earlier many weren’t sure was going to happen.

The courtship and wedding plans of Brittney Griner and Glory Johnson, marquee players in the Women’s National Basketball Association, have been complicated.

Ms. Griner and Ms. Johnson, each 24 years old, have also been entertaining and largely public, including their active presence on Twitter and Instagram, their January appearance on the TLC show “Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta,” and the mug shots that accompanied articles about their April 22 arrests on domestic violence charges after a fight at their new home west of Phoenix.

At the same time, this union of two fiercely competitive athletes is raising sometimes uncomfortable questions about same-sex domestic violence, professional sports policies, gender blending and society’s obsession with celebrities as role models.

On Friday, Laurel J. Richie, the W.N.B.A. president, announced a seven-game suspension, without pay, for both athletes. They will also be required to attend individual counseling sessions. Once their legal troubles are resolved, Ms. Griner and Ms. Johnson must continue to navigate public and private scrutiny of their relationship while living apart during the season and keeping their heads in the game as they play against each other five times during the regular season.

“We’ll probably be a family that has homes in multiple locations,” Ms. Griner said in an interview before their arrests. “Like the circus.”

A circus was their first date, Ms. Griner said, though Ms. Johnson didn’t know it.

Ms. Griner said she has admired Ms. Johnson since they were college rivals (Ms. Griner at Baylor and Ms. Johnson at Tennessee) but “didn’t have the nerve to flirt with her.” When they both attended a 2013 USA Basketball training camp together in Las Vegas, Ms. Griner flirted like crazy. But Ms. Griner was coming out of a relationship and worried that her timing might be off.

“Plus, Glory is straight,” Ms. Griner said. “That was another reason why I thought this could end really bad.”

Ms. Johnson thought Ms. Griner was “a really cool person” off the court, but not on. “Nobody likes her on the court,” Ms. Johnson said. “She blocks all our shots.” She never considered a romantic relationship with Ms. Griner.

But something changed on their last day in Las Vegas. They were part of a group that went shopping (Ms. Griner helped Ms. Johnson select an off-the-shoulder shirt), out to dinner and to a Cirque du Soleil performance. Ms. Griner was in pursuit.

“Anything she wanted, I made sure she had it,” she said. “I made sure she sat by me. I got my arm around her, and I was so happy.”

Ms. Johnson said she wasn’t sure what was happening, but that was O.K. She was not attracted to women, but she realized she was attracted to Ms. Griner.

“I’m not a lesbian,” Ms. Johnson said. “But Brittney is different.”

Ms. Johnson also was going against her aversion to dating other athletes. Ms. Griner’s affection felt genuine and not superficial. “From the beginning, I could trust her,” Ms. Johnson said. “She’s extremely caring. It was a different feel.”

Ms. Griner publicly came out as gay shortly after she was selected by the Mercury as the No. 1 draft pick in April 2013, though her sexuality had not been a secret and it generated little notice in her new hometown Phoenix. The city embraced Ms. Griner, a lanky Houston native with a deep voice, huge hands (a bigger grip than LeBron James) and size 17 shoes. She wowed fans with two dunks in her first pro game.

The couple stayed in touch for a while through text messages, but their schedules soon got in the way. During the W.N.B.A.’s off-season that winter, Ms. Griner was in China with the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association and Ms. Johnson played in the Russian women’s league.

Ms. Johnson asked Ms. Griner to visit her in Russia after the Chinese season ended in January, but Ms. Griner chose a Miami vacation instead. “She basically dropped me after that,” Ms. Griner said. “That was probably one of the worst decisions of my life.”

It was impossible to avoid each other on the court, however, and once the 2014 W.N.B.A. season started in early June, they reconnected. After Tulsa gave the Mercury their first loss of the season, the two went out with teammates from each club, but they went back to Ms. Johnson’s Tulsa home together. Both missed their flights the next morning.

“It was weird, but it was so comfortable it didn’t feel like it was wrong,” Ms. Johnson said. “But I didn’t know how I was going to tell my family and my friends.”

When she did tell them, Ms. Johnson said they didn’t believe her. A week later her parents and siblings came to visit her in Tulsa, while Ms. Griner was also visiting.

“When they actually met Brittney for the first time, they were like, ‘Oh, we get it now,’ ” Ms. Johnson said. “They were extremely welcoming.”

They have been a couple ever since, and were engaged in August 2014 in an elaborate surprise party that Ms. Griner hosted in Atlanta. Most of Ms. Johnson’s teammates from her senior year at Tennessee were there to witness the engagement.

“I still don’t really feel like I’m attracted to females in general,” Ms. Johnson said. “It’s just that I’m attracted to just one person.”

Part of that attraction is the fact that Ms. Griner understands her and supports her career, Ms. Johnson said, while appreciating the things she does, large and small, to demonstrate her love. Both women are accustomed to being independent, and they take pains to remind each other that sometimes it’s O.K. to be taken care of.

“I can rely on her more than I can rely on people I’ve known my whole life,” Ms. Griner said. “She just wants to make me better. I give her a struggle, but she’s patient with me.”

Friends say the fact that the couple excel at the same demanding profession works in their favor.

“They understand each other’s jobs,” the Atlanta Dream player Angel McCoughtry said shortly before the ceremony. “Since Glo has come into the picture, she’s just a different woman. She’s just a different Brittney.”

Janelle Roy, Ms. Griner’s best friend from high school, said she encouraged the relationship after feeling a connection with Ms. Johnson that she never had with other women Ms. Griner had dated. “I felt like Glo was right for my sister,” Ms. Roy said. “She could be herself.”

After the news of the couple’s recent arrests, fans, national sports columnists, domestic violence experts and social-media trolls eagerly weighed in. Would they still marry? Should they marry? Should they be suspended from the league? Could they help raise awareness about same-sex domestic violence?

Would everyone just back off and leave them alone already? (To that effect, the following day, the two women stopped posting pictures and comments on their prolific social media accounts.)

According to the police report, an argument turned physical in the Goodyear, Ariz., home the pair had bought two days earlier. Glory Johnson’s sisters, Grace and Judy Johnson, and Ms. Griner’s friend Julio Trejo tried unsuccessfully to separate the couple. Judy Johnson said she called 911 because she did not want anyone to get hurt, according to the police report.

They were arrested and booked into the Maricopa County jail.

But Ms. Griner and Ms. Johnson hardly missed a beat, arriving as scheduled the next day for the wedding walk-through at a Phoenix resort.

A day later, Ms. Johnson posted an Instagram photo of the couple nuzzling, with the caption: “WE’RE OK! @brittneygriner and I are home, injury-free, and still wedding planning! We know we must set better examples, even during the most trying times, and we are EXTREMELY sorry for all the negative attention we brought to ourselves, our family, and the league… #LoveLife #StillBlessed #WorkInProgress #NobodysPerfect”

The following week, Ms. Griner pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges and agreed to complete 26 weeks of domestic violence counseling, after which the charges would be dropped.

“This will never happen again, and I take my relationship and my responsibility as a role model seriously,” Ms. Griner said in a statement.

Ms. Johnson’s case was transferred to a neighboring justice court and is pending. She has pleaded not guilty to assault and disorderly conduct charges and is due back in court June 17, but her lawyer, Howard Snader, said he would seek dismissal.

While partner abuse makes headlines in men’s professional sports, the Griner-Johnson incident wasn’t the first time female players have faced such charges.

In 2012, the former Detroit Shock guard Deanna Nolan was arrested and charged with assaulting her wife in front of the couple’s children. The same year, police arrested Chamique Holdsclaw, a W.N.B.A. rookie of the year and one-time scoring champion, and charged her with damaging her ex-girlfriend’s car with a baseball bat and then shooting at it with a handgun.

In an interview with police, Ms. Griner blamed weeks of stress leading up to their wedding and buying their home for causing the fight. But stress alone does not cause domestic violence, experts said, and they caution against using it as justification.

“The good news is that the vast majority of stressed people do not become violent,” said Sarah Buel, a law professor at Arizona State University and a former prosecutor and domestic violence victim.

On May 8, the couple looked ahead, even as showers threatened their outdoor ceremony at the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort in Phoenix. Glory Johnson’s brother, Isaac, and Brittney Griner’s mother, Sandra Griner, walked the women down the aisle. But not before a quick prayer from Glory’s mother, Mercy Johnson, who looked skyward.

“If you don’t want it to happen, just let it pour down,” she said she prayed. “We got a blue sky, and that means the good lord approved it.”

Mercy Johnson said she was not expecting her youngest child to be the first to marry, and did not expect her to marry another woman.

“You want your child to be happy — you have to love them and stand by them,” she said as she watched her daughter and new daughter-in-law pose for photographs under the wedding canopy. “That’s why I’m here. And she looks happy.”

The couple’s fathers chose not to attend the wedding.

The couple said before the wedding that they planned to keep homes in at least two different cities and are working to stay together during the W.N.B.A. off-season, perhaps playing on the same team in China.

They also have other plans that may keep them closer to home. “We’re planning on kids sooner than later,” Ms. Johnson said. “I’m considering missing a season.”

Though they differ on how large their family will be (Ms. Johnson says “three max” and Ms. Griner says “a basketball team”), they agree on who will carry the children.

Ms. Johnson’s three sisters (Judy, Grace and Dorothy) and Isaac, and Ms. Griner’s brother and sister (DeCarlo and Shekera), along with Mr. Trejo, Ms. Griner’s former Mercury teammate Lynetta Kizer and Ms. Roy (,the “best man”) stood beside the couple as Jacob Hansen, a Universal Life minister, performed the ceremony under a white canopy adorned with hydrangea and coral and white roses.

The couple, who will use the surname Johnson-Griner, wrote their own vows. Ms. Griner was brief, funny and tender: “With you by my side, I know that I’ll always be taken care of and protected. I will give every ounce of my love that is possible to you, as long as you cook me fried chicken wings and hot chocolate.”

Ms. Johnson’s vows also short and sweet, addressed the complications in their relationship head on — and with humor. “I promise to be the Whitney to your Bobby, the Bonnie to your Clyde, the Ike to your Tina,” she began, to laughter from the small gathering of about 50 friends and family.

“I promise to accept that we’re different, that we will see the world differently and over the course of our marriage we will want different things,” she said. “I don’t expect this to be easy.”

ON THIS DAY

When May 8, 2015

Where Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort, Phoenix

The Roster The wedding party featured the couple’s white Doberman puppies, Dobee and Major, wearing black bowties.

Guests included the Phoenix Mercury vice president Ann Meyers Drysdale; the Mercury star Diana Taurasi; the Mercury coach Sandy Brondello and an assistant coach, Julie Hairgrove; the Mercury general manager Jim Pitman and his wife, Linda; and the president of the couple’s unofficial fan club, Mindy Redman, and her wife, Stephanie Koteles.